Comments by Nejust2004

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Posted on March 7 at 6:21 p.m.

I think they need a lot of courts, if you check out their website they are marketing to the parents of elite players who can afford to send their kids to board and attend the academy. There's a rumor that the Junior Bulgarian National team might be coming to train this summer. That and other kids from out of town should fill up the courts nicely. Elings will profit off this as they have a revenue sharing arrangement with the Academy. At $3,300 per month for Boarders/$2,500 for non-boarders attending the Academy this could be very lucrative to the Academy and Elings Park. All that Elings had to do was free up the courts which they have done by tripling the membership fees and driving all us regulars away. The only losers on this equation is the Santa Barbara tennis playing public and the Taxpayers who are subsidizing Elings with below market rent ($1.00 per year).

In order to have a vibrant facility you need active players. Elings fees structure has driven away the active public players making it a ghost town.

The bathrooms may need a little work but primarilly just needed to be cleaned (and they were cleaned by members when Elings didn't do it for a year and a half).

The city may or may not have been losing money, they claimed the loss was $15,000 per year, coincindentally, that was the approximate cost to run the lights at night, which Elings has now turned off since they now routinely lock the parking lot at sunset.

David Niles was a paying member for many years as were most of his friends. Any failure by Elings to collect day fees was their poor management.

Why is Elings Park charging fees that are higher than virtually any other Public Tennis Facility in the United States?

Does it make sense for them to charge these high fees and have few public players?

Could it be that Elings Park wants to have few regular public tennis players so that they can control the courts and let their for Profit Partner run an academy catering to a few local kids and out of town boarders who can afford to pay $2,500 to $3,300 per month as advertised?